


Spitfire

by Dean_Wax



Category: Original Work
Genre: Albinism, Betrayal, Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Death, Fairy Tale Style, Fate & Destiny, High Fantasy, M/M, Monsters, Mysticism, Old Gods, Oracles, Prophetic Visions, Rape, Trans Male Character, Transformation, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 18:49:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 11,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16540175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dean_Wax/pseuds/Dean_Wax
Summary: “Tell me, what is your name, my sweet?”“Wik wik wik,” the Oracle snickered bitterly. “We do not have a name. We have no want. We have no need , except to eat.”“You are hungry,” the Prince cooed curiously. “I have plenty of food. Just tell me your fancy.”“Flesh,” the Oracle said darkly, his terrible maw parting with a raspy breath.The Prince’s eyes widened so far they could almost be called innocent, whites visible around the ichor irises. “We could… arrange that,” he said slowly, his eyes dragging across the room with little focus.===In a world where old gods still roam, a wealthy city in the grips of tyranny has run out of beautiful men to appease their maniacal king; all except the Oracle, that is. Three old men would offer him up to die to save their own skin. When one tears at the strings that Fate is weaving, the consequences can be dire indeed.





	1. Part One: The Callous Plot

Once upon a time there was a kingdom by the riverside that lay in the shadow of a mountain. Carved out of stone, its buildings stood strong and tall but its people trembled under the tyranny of a beautiful monster. For although the Prince was fair of face, his eyes were black and cruel, like his heart. The dreadful amusements dredged up from the dark recesses of his mind were whimpered warnings among the court, though their knees were never weaker than when his lips would twist and purr “Bring me something  _ pretty _ .”   
The word ‘pretty’ had soured in the minds of men, for the people soon learned that a comely hip and tender swell of breast held no beauty in the Prince’s eyes. In their desperation to draw the Prince’s ire instead of his admiration, some men of the court took to drag, only expediting their peril by drawing his attention sooner. Of all the things to ornament a man, he liked blood and finery best. It had become his habit to hold grand galas and bask in the lavish scenes his citizens created for him, though woe betide them if he ever saw fit to rise from his throne.    
As the years marched on, the kingdom began to run out of pretty men; it seemed every visual delicacy, from the dukes to the peasantry, had been picked clean. Others had fled or mutilated themselves. These days it was commonplace for a merchant or nobleman to be disfigured. Hard-hearted parents would spare neither knife nor acid to ensure their child’s survival. For despite everything, the city was wealthy; rich in both gold and science. If they could bear the agony of artificial ugliness, a man could live well here. Even the poor were unlikely to go hungry; there were greater delicacies in an affluent home’s trash here than there were in the common market of the Capital, for those that were rich were very, very rich.   
It was these conditions that forced an informal meeting between a selection of the city’s elite upper crust, safe all these years in their sacks of age-weathered skin.   
“We need more!” they all agreed in urgent hisses. With great conspiracy they gathered under the dead oak tree in the centre of the town, away from the walls with eyes and ears.   
“We have ransacked the workhouses, the farms and the brothels. There are no more!”   
“He cannot grow tired within the castle,” the oldest one hissed, raising a gnarled finger with an expression of utmost foreboding. “If he begins to raid the villages beyond the mountains, the Capital will no longer turn a blind eye. They will consider it an act of war.”   
“Our armies are puny,” the skinny one spat. “Each day I praise his highness on the skill of his shieldmaidens, but their ranks are not enough to hold strong against the might of an army! We could barely defend our own walls.”   
The men stood uncomfortably despite their lavish robes, thinking hard on what to do. It was the portly one who spoke up at last, just three fat, ringed fingers left to raise on his left hand.   
“There is one,” he murmured. “One left.”   
“One left?!” One snapped, grabbing him by the arms. “Why didn’t you offer him up sooner?”   
“He is the Oracle,” he said gravely, his lips a firm line in his round face.    
The old man paled and released him, recoiling as though burned. “You fool! You’ll bring a hex upon us!” he growled “You, with fewer fingers, you should know!”   
“I know better than all that he’s a babbling beast!” the lord boasted defiantly. “He is weak. He does not work and I doubt he often sees the sun. All he does is chew his tar and bask in the offerings of his ill-gotten flock.”   
“They say he sleeps with one eye open,” the old one fretted, “And yet still two more to shut.”   
“His sight is a curse and nothing more.” The big one jeered, “He’s a man like you or I, but with smoother skin and an addled mind. I say we bring him before the Prince.”   
The old men rustled and murmured, the daylight flooding the square feeling ill-fitting for their conspiracy.   
“The Oracle is a holy man to many in this city,” the thin one said furtively. “If we rip him from his home, the people may rally against us. Too many owe their fortunes to him.”    
“Then we must convince him to come to the palace of his own accord,” the fat one replied gravely. Turning to the thin one, he asked; “You, with your silver tongue and courtly experience, will you go?”   
Although he looked a bit sick at the thought, it was true that the thin lord had verbally slunk through more perilous acts of diplomacy than this. He nodded and gathered up his robes, then set off to make the journey across the city and up the rickety cliffside stair to the infamous marble dais where the Oracle did reside, his two co-conspirators trailing behind him… at a distance.


	2. Part Two: The First Attempt

As the thin one drew closer to the dais, the boon of his companion’s compliments began to deflate in his chest. The path turned to white cobblestone and the world seemed to grow quiet; even the insects hushed, yet the smell of dead flowers and sweet rot became aggressive, refusing to leave his nose as if to serve as some kind of omen. This man had seen the faces of the gods. Others in the city brought offerings to him and paid him great reverence, yet here he was to try to coax him to his doom.   
He drew a deep breath of the cloying air, his head feeling slower than usual. Incense. He could see the delicate plumes of smoke drift down from the hangers either side of the shrine’s entrance. Gathering up his gumption just as he had his robes, the thin man started up the last few steps to the surface of the dais, his back already creaking into a gratuitous bow.   
“Oh great and all-seeing Eye,” he began with great airs in his husky croak, “Divine Oracle and mouthpiece to the blessed Fortu- _ arrghlh! _ ”   
A wash of cold, coppery liquid met him at the top of the stair, the sudden splash sending him sprawling backwards on his bony behind. He spit onto the ground at once, grimacing up at the source of the spray. At the top of the stair he stood there, a wooden bucket in his bony hands. They were ruddy and pink at the creases, but the wider expanses of his skin were a ghostly shade of pale laced with blue-purple veins. His hair, like flax, was washed-out too, hanging long and wild from his scalp.    
There was a strange beauty about him, the slender man supposed, if only he would submit to a good scrub. His lips were shapely but horribly stained from chewing incessantly on some yellow-black substance that dyed his gums like a bruise. That was all he could make out of his face for the rest was obscured by a curved mesh mask that peaked in the centre, the feathers fanning out around the edges only serving to remind him more of a bird.    
“Not Fortune,” the Oracle corrected sharply, baring his teeth. “Fortune is a blind beast that Chaos birthed in the Beginning. She has no eyes or ears to acknowledge your pleas, only a mouth to smile and consume. We serve Fate.”   
The old man faltered as he pushed his frail form up from the ground. He was used to more shallow subjects of flattery; debates of demigods and the Ancient Ones were quite far from his mind. “Well, surely…” he started slowly, confused, “Surely Fate is a creation of Order, then? All lines in the flow of life are spun by her hands. Such intricate design could only be mastered by a follower of the Divine Law.”    
The Oracle only cracked a smile with the reply; “Hello, Liar.”   
The old advisor was affronted. “Liar?” he blustered, stomping up the steps to aid his show of indignation. “Do you treat all visitors with such unkindness?”   
The blond gave a barking laugh. “Why would I embody kindness? There is no demigod named Kindness, for no man has ever ascended nor dropped from the loins of the Great Ones with such qualities in their soul.”    
“Surely, Morel-” the thin man started.   
“Don’t even utter his name,” the Oracle sneered over his shoulder as he set down the bucket. “You all sing praises for Law and Morel but if you serve anyone, it is Sen. Pride, one of his faces, is honoured every day by the flattery and half truths spun by snakes like you. You cannot deceive the Eye.”   
Fuming, it took the thin one a long moment to swallow his anger at the accusations. He consoled himself with their seclusion; no one from the court was likely to be in earshot. “Very well,” he said icily, “The fabled Eye of yours is all-seeing indeed. Perhaps you already know what I have come to request.”   
“I do,” the Oracle replied.   
“So will you agree?”   
“It depends on how you ask me.”   
“Whatever do you mean?” the thin one grimaced, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.   
The blond remained serene but his glee shone throne the cracks in his sticky smile. “You will ask me this thing, but you will ask on your knees.”   
The advisor blinked but did not beg pardon. If his ears hadn’t heard it, surely the whites of his eyes had. “What did you say?” he asked, his hushed tone barely containing his indignation.   
“Kneel,” the Oracle barked. “That is the place for greeds like you.”    
The thin man recoiled. “I will  _ not _ !” he barked, losing his composure. “For it is you who should kneel! An unwashed wretch such as yourself should surely scream in  _ ecstasy  _ at the invitation to the castle.”   
“Then begone, filth! For I am cleaning,” the Oracle’s voice was suddenly very loud, looming before him.    
Though their height was evenly matched, the thin one flinched under the sight of those sharpened, tar-smeared teeth. He was thin, thin; thinner than the Oracle and even older too. He had lost his little endeavour the moment the seer had whittled down his temper to a thread. Clicking his tongue angrily, he huddled his slender shoulders and turned on his heel. As he departed down the path, it became as littered with laughter as it was dead petals.   
The goading call followed him: “You will send another, Senner! For these filthy things, they come in threes.”


	3. Part Three: The Second Failure

Sitting on a weathered bench on the outskirts of the city, the old one and the fat one had very little to talk about between themselves. When they heard the quiet  _ clap clap clap _ of the thin one’s sandals upon the path, they snapped out of their stupor and looked up at his lack of company with dismay.    
“He will not come down from the clifftop,” the thin one said with a scowl. “He said to send another.”   
“Another?” the fat one remarked with dismay, turning to his co-conspirator. “Then you must go,” he implored the old one. “He will know my face.”   
The old one bristled, his bushy moustache quivering on his upper lip. “I don’t deal well with holy men,” he reasoned, startling as a meaty hand braced the small of his back and pushed him up off the bench.   
“There is little holy about him,” the fat one said with his best rendition of an encouraging smile. “At least, not to us Lawful folk.” The smile quickly grew into a quivering leer as he attempted to hold it, so he stopped. “Please go,” he implored the eldest in a less derisive tone. “You would have a better chance than I.”   
“You have many years of experience,” the thin one carried on in same vein, knowing that his own chance was spent. “Less silver-tongued than I, surely, but you are still a skilled advisor.”   
The old one’s brow was furrowed but he did not have the resolve to argue, so with great reluctance he hitched up his gilded belt and began the short journey up the cliffside stair. As he navigated the path through overgrown gardens surrounding the dais, his wrinkled eyes turned wide and watching. In the pit of his heart he half expected a holy hand to snatch at his ankles from the undergrowth, but no hands came. It was this watchfulness that taught the old one that many of the white stones in the cobbled path were not stones at all, but bones. As he stepped upon the former face of some unfortunate soul, he winced and began to pace quicker.    
By the time he reached the marble steps, his breath was shallow and uneven. He fell upon his knees at the top of the steps, drained.    
“Hello, Coward,” a voice greeted him.   
The old one  looked up with surprise, gasped, then averted his eyes. He had never imagined the Oracle would receive him in the nude, yet here he was; his deathly pale hindquarters faced him from where he stood next to a washbucket. After the initial shock, the grate of the insult sank in.    
“How could you know me?” he asked with a frown and a voice that was smaller than he wished it to be.   
The Oracle gave an unseen smile over his shoulder as he ran the washcloth down one pallid arm. “I know all of your wizened court,” he explained. “You do not need to see me to be Seen. Glimpses of you are woven into the fates of others just as others are woven into yours.”   
“Oh,” the old one said gently, staring at the floor as he listened. He shrank slightly at another splatter of water on the tiles as the Oracle continued to bathe.   
“Will you not gaze upon me, Coward, and know the face you’d damn?” the blond’s voice called loftily across the room.   
“N-no,” the old man said with wavering stubbornness, gripping the stone steps tight in his gnarled hands. “It isn’t proper.”   
“Proper,” the Oracle repeated, calmly bending to wet the cloth in the bucket before carrying on. “Are offerings not meant to be washed?”   
“Well, yes.” the advisor cleared his throat softly. “Yes, that is true. But I do not think that our Prince requires such a thing. Perhaps he did, long ago, but now he is not so discriminating.”   
“Ah, yes,” the Oracle smiled. “Before the people fled. We almost starved during those fat years. The filth don’t care to make offerings when they can feast on Fortune’s leavings, and we were so  _ thin _ . When the pain grew too much we crawled down to the river bank and we  _ took  _ an eel. It wasn’t offered. The fury of Pescedon was so great that she cursed us with her affliction. But you would not see it, would you? Not out of respect, but fear.”   
The old one flinched but did not protest. “It isn’t proper,” he whispered again, his heart heavy.   
“Then make your plea to the floor,” the seer’s voice swept around him, pressing tight upon his conscience.   
The man’s frail lips moved but made no sound.    
“Will you not speak?” the Oracle ask, his voice brewing with impatience.   
The old one tried with all his might, but he could not bring himself to do it.   
“Then run from here!” the bark jolted the man from fear’s icy shackles.He all but scrambled down the steps, the call following him as he hurried as fast as his old bones could carry him, “And send another greed, for these foul things, they come in threes!”   
Trembling, the old man would hide in the outskirts of the garden until he caught his breath. Only then would slowly make his way back to his peers in defeat.


	4. Part Four: These Foul Things Come in Threes

The other two advisors had moved closer to the foot of the stair, less optimistic about the old one’s chances. Loitering in the shade of an old olive tree, they had little to say to one another, for they were not friends.    
“He is back,” the fat one announced bleakly as the old one approached.   
“Brother, not even you could convince him?” the thin one implored, rising to his feet as the shorter one shambled closer and took a space on the bench.   
“He will not come down from the dais,” the old one said wearily. “He said to send another; that these things come in threes.”   
“Yes,” the thin one’s eyes widened as he recalled. “Yes, he said that to me too. It seems he is determined to see you.”   
The fat one’s face flushed as he felt the eyes of the others fixed upon him. Swelling as he drew in a deep breath, he grit his teeth. “So there is no avoiding it, then,” he frowned down at his feet before lifting his head to stare at the beginning of the stair. “I must see him again.”   
“Yes, you must go,” one of the others urged, pushing a palm into his meaty shoulder. “You are our last chance to appease the Prince!”   
The fat one rose, his reluctance feeling heavier than the sum of his flesh. He did not bid his colleagues goodbye as he set off on the climb around the winding stair. By now the afternoon had reached its peak, and a crescendo of cicadas accompanied him along the path through the garden. He had made this trip two times before.   
“Hello, Traitor.” The Oracle greeted him as though he had been expecting his arrival, fully clothed in a fresh tunic and seated in the centre of the dais. A cone of incense burned on the floor before him, framing his face with thin tendrils of fragrant white smoke.   
“Hello, vile thing,” the fat murmured reluctantly, not meeting his gaze even as he ascended the final few steps.   
The Oracle grinned. He seemed to prefer this address to the others that had come before it. “Do you believe me yet?” he asked, splaying his fingers on his knees. “Or is it that you don’t want to believe?”   
The fat one frowned but held his tongue. Forging past his feelings, he stepped closer to the centre of dais and eased his weight down onto the marble. The Oracle regarded him with a quiet whicker.    
“If I believe you,” the nobleman selected his words carefully, “What will become of me?”   
“Why don’t we see?” the Oracle purred, leaning forward and turning up his palm. A knife lay there; silver, sharp and clean. “For just a little more you can find out how your actions will doom us all.”   
He look down with a trembling sigh, the doughy fingers of his left hand gripping at his sandal. “Perhaps we can come to an arrangement,” he murmured.    
The fat one was gone for quite some time. At the bottom of the cliff, the old men grew restless.    
“Perhaps he simply fled the city,” the eldest one remarked snidely, lashing out with his innermost desires. “Perhaps he left us all to die with our dilemma!”   
“There is no other way down from the cliffside,” the other squinted, sipping from an ivory flask. His thin lips curled into a cruel smile. “Of course, if he hurled himself into the water, we would hear the splash.”   
The old one had to choke back a chuckle, for around the bend of the rocky stair, the fat one limped into view with ginger, staggered footsteps. His footsteps were still, somehow, characteristically quiet, dwarfed by the wooden  _ slap _ of sandals on much bonier feet, for the Oracle followed after him. There in the light at the foot of the cliff he looked no less fearsome or exalted than he had in his marble domain.    
“So you have come,” the thin one said uncomfortably, “Very well. Follow us, and we will assure your safe entry to the palace.”   
The fat one’s wounded gait never paused in a step. His stony, irate stare as he passed the pair of them was enough to make them fall silent. The Oracle’s lips curled beneath the edge of his mesh masked as he followed after. Rattled, the two advisors took a moment to recollect themselves before they hurried after, attempting to coax the seer into preening.   
They offered him a fresh white tunic and satin sandals for his feet, and the Oracle refused both of his things. When the old one took his hand and dabbed the inside of his wrist with a sweet perfume he did not resist, though his jagged smile challenged the other to step closer with the gilded comb in his hand. The thin lord wavered like a reed and let it drop back into his deep pockets. Amongst all three of them, none dared suggest he remove the pointed visor from his forehead, for it was the only thing that shielded them from his fabled seer’s eyes.


	5. Part Five: Into the City

As they entered the carved stone corridors of the city, the shade cooled the sweat on the old men’s brows. Once citizens caught sight of the fabled Oracle walking down amongst the common folk, it seemed that a ripple of rumours spread out from their footfalls like the surface of a disturbed pond. By the time they reached the entrance of the grand old palace, there was a gossiping little crowd awaiting their arrival, speaking behind silk fans and decorated hands.   
“Oracle!” a woman’s jubilant cry accompanied the jangle of her bracelets as she broke ranks and jogged towards him. She was scarcely decent for the public eye, though the huge swell of her pregnant belly showing underneath her gossamer robe afforded her such liberties. She held a tiny knife in her palm, but she smiled as though the holy man was her dearest friend. “Will you bless my unborn?” she asked, already making the slice in the fleshy heel of her hand. She did not flinch at the pain - with the way she swayed slightly where she stood, it seemed the cut did little to break through her religious fervor.   
For once the Oracle seemed serious; even sagely. His smile was not as goading as it had been with his other recent visitors. “We would never refuse an offering,” he said dutifully, reaching out for the woman’s extended hand. He brought the pool of crimson blood to his lips and sucked it dry, swallowing it all in one shot as he clapped a palm to her belly. “May the child live to die,” he told her emphatically, leaning in close.   
While some onlookers recoiled, the woman rejoiced. “Thank you!” she cried, wiping her blood from his maw with a fine handkerchief. He nodded but raised the palm before her, and she fell quiet to listen to what he had to say.   
“You will take a ferry to the temple of Fate and bathe in the fountain there,” he told her. “But when the afterbirth arrives; do not offer it to the likes of me. Bury it for the Ancient Ones beneath an old oak tree.”   
The three advisors could only look on in disdain as the unsettling business was carried out. As the woman agreed and all but danced away, ecstatic, one of them finally asked him;   
“How could this be a blessing? You have wished death upon the babe.”   
“Yes,” the Oracle replied keenly as they slowly scaled the royal stairs. “And it is good. Immortality is a terrible thing; it drives most souls to madness. The child should meet his Mortality and be happy.”   
Following along in the blond’s wake, the men exchanged uncomfortable glances. Madness seemed an appropriate word for the condition of their monstrous Prince, though they would only utter such an opinion in the most secluded of spaces.    
At the top of the stair, more were waiting at the entryway. This time it was a row of menacing, armed guards who greeted the Oracle with the tips of their spears at his throat. He replied with no more than a tight smile.   
“Let us through!” the fat one called from behind him, puffing out his considerable chest. “He is an honoured guest of the Prince!”   
“He is nothing but a Hexseer,” one guard growled with a voice even lower than the point of his spear which was pointed straight at the waif. “He cursed my lover to die in that river.”   
“And you will die also, if you do not let us through!” the thin one barked, his temper inflamed by his scathed ego. “I will sign the orders myself!”   
The guard’s misshapen jaws were set in sneers, but they begrudgingly opened the gates. The Oracle had only one path to take; a straight line through the foyer to face his fate. The set of splendid doors that lay before him yawned like the maw of an opulent beast, and the mother of pearl inlaid in the handle captured his attention only briefly before he heard the music playing in the ballroom beyond.


	6. Part Six: Pretty

As soon as the Oracle stepped into the chamber, the door slammed shut behind him and he heard the frantic scrabbling of a bolt being shoved into place. He smiled to himself, for the old men were so swift to show their true colours. He knew what they sought to do. The Oracle had seen many of the horrid fates that awaited the pretty ones who came to him with daintily offered digits and uneasy, quivering lips. The simpering little things were stuck to the fate lines like flies in sticky tar, some stupid enough to think themselves strong enough to struggle free. He had seen them snuffed out screaming. Yet still he pushed through the door, cynical in the face of the forces around him.   
An explosion of colour with a softer boom of music. The women had spared no expense, these parties were a gay frolic if one simply looked at them in the right light. Whether it was because they were cowed or simply uncaring, they seemed ready to oblige the Prince's desire for atmosphere. Yet for all the frivolity of their jewelled scarves and silk gowns, none stood out more than the one devoid of decoration; the white cloth of the Oracle’s tunic a brilliant beacon in its own right.   
“Pure one,” he snickered bitterly to himself, picking his way through the ballroom. Some said the Oracle was blind but they were wrong; he saw well enough through the mesh of his mysterious mask, and the Prince was easy to see. There he was atop his throne, voyeur to the fancy around him and yet entertained by no one all at once, it seemed, for his inky gaze passed over the splendid scene dispassionately until he happened upon the Oracle. Only then did his dusky, purple lips curl back to reveal gleaming teeth.   
“ _ Pretty _ .”   
The Oracle took a step back but his heel hit wall; and then he was already before him, the rich plum silk of his suit washing out his ashen-brown skin. His pallor managed to seem even more unnatural than the Oracle’s for there seemed to be no blood in him. There was no blush; no broken capillary or delicate blue line of vein. The Oracle felt pink and raw before this composed finery, and his lip bowed down to show a row of sharply filed teeth.   
“I did not  _ say _ it was a masquerade,” The Prince announced. “But you are pretty all the same.”   
The Oracle snarled in reflex, splitting red weals at the sides of his mouth that drew a keen stare as though they glared like burning coals. Agitated under the Prince’s gaze, he spun on his heel and attempted to make his way along the wall. He hit shoulder before he had realised, freezing on the spot with a grimace.   
“You smell like molasses and herbs,” The Prince purred. “And poppy seed.”   
The Oracle sniffed and spat on the tiles with no regard for the display it made. “You smell of blood,” he snapped back unkindly.    
The Prince, for his part, did not seem to mind. A fey grin spread on his face as he grabbed the waif’s hair and pulled him closer, tracing the side of his face with a blackened fingernail.   
“Indeed, I am greedy. Tell me, what is your name, my sweet?”   
“ _ Wik wik wik _ ,” the Oracle snickered bitterly. “We do not have a name. We have no want. We have no  _ need _ , except to eat.”   
“You are hungry,” the Prince cooed curiously. “I have plenty of food. Just tell me your fancy.”   
“ _ Flesh _ ,” the Oracle said darkly, his terrible maw parting with a raspy breath.   
The Prince’s eyes widened so far they could almost be called innocent, whites visible around the ichor irises. “We could… arrange that,” he said slowly, his eyes dragging across the room with little focus. The Oracle’s flaxen hair seemed to draw his attention again. “What do you like? Eel? Pheasant? Suckling pig?”   
“No,” the blond clicked his tongue, turning from the man and making towards the tables. The Prince was quick to trot after him, pressing the matter as he kept as close as a shadow.   
“Rabbit? Quail?  _ Wilderbeast? _ ” he asked with growing impatience. “ _ Tell _ me the meat and I will  _ make _ them procure it, my sweet.”   
“We don’t  _ eat _ just any old meat,” the shorter man rounded on him with surprising intensity. “Flesh.  _ Fresh _ , and offered up in agony. These mewling greeds who wish to see what Eye already knows. If I didn’t eat them, their worries would.” He sniggered, spinning away off-kilter. He hit the foot of a banquet spread and grabbed a glass of something red. Without his sticky candy, this would do.   
The Prince appeared enlightened, the black pauldrons upon his shoulders bristling as he rose up on the balls of his feet. “I want to see,” he said eagerly, turning to the nearest thing. “You,  _ girl _ , come to me. Hold out your hand, so I might feed it to my sweet.”   
“Your highness?” she squeaked at the order, her eyebrows knitted to her hairline. She flicked her eyes to the Oracle as if that might stall the order.   
The Oracle just washed down his wine, taking a gulp of air that he brought back up as a laugh. “The seeing is only for those who make an offering.” He jeered, “The ones whose flesh we eat. We show them through the Eye.”   
“But that’s not  _ fair _ ,” the Prince said petulantly as the girl (no fool) fled. “I don’t want to bleed.  _ I _ shouldn’t have to do such things.”   
“Then  _ no _ fate I will forsee,” the blond growled, slamming the goblet back on the table. “The Eye will not open with offering.”   
“ _ What _ eye?!” the Prince snapped, irate for the first time. A tiny tremor ran through even the most experienced of supplicant spies, their fixed smiles faintly forced. They had practiced their feigned gaiety for a thousand nights or more, but never had they seen their monstrous lord so agitated.   
“You don’t know about the Oracles,” the blond accused smugly, his split lips twisting into a leer. “The sighted vermin, the terrible children. You stay in your tower too much.”   
“I do as I please,” the Prince said darkly, showing his own set of sharp teeth. “You’ll do well not to defy me.”   
“They gave me to a shaman, and then a herbalist, then  _ here _ ,” the Oracle carried on, jutting out his chin. “Cast upon the dais to be this city’s seer. But of all the visitors I expected, the most important never came. A little lordly horror, and  _ Irfan _ was his name,” he finished with a goading whisper.   
The grimace fell from the Prince’s lips, his hands flying to the pretty’s shoulders and squeezing hard enough to hurt. “No one knows my name,” he whispered furiously. “No one left alive. Who  _ told _ you that word?”   
“The Eye.”   
With a roar the black one threw him, his ichor talons digging into the mesh mask as he went. Affixed to steel rings through his ears, a weak link gave way on one side but not the other. The flesh split and with a shrill yelp the seer fell hard onto the dance floor, warm blood trickling down and around the ridges of his right ear. With a harried hush, the music stopped, and the citizens stared wide-eyed as their Highness advanced upon the crumpled waif.   
“The ball is over, friends,” he announced effortlessly with a grandiose gesture, his smile spreading to show his fangs. “So leave now.  _ Quickly _ . The time to feast will come again.”   
There was a flurry of fabric as the largely female gathering of citizens made for the grand pearl doors, hushed whispers and hurried footsteps creating an anxious tempo in the chamber that had been so merry moments ago. They knew better than to scream.


	7. Part Seven: An Ominous Name

Smiling as the room emptied out, the Prince stepped forward, planting a black boot on the Oracle’s milky hindquarters and flipping him over. Blue eyes stared up at him gamely, set above a nasty little grin.   
“Irfan the Terrible,” the Oracle coughed with defiance. “That is your name.”   
The Prince inhaled sharply through his nose, for there in the centre of his forehead was an unmistakable fold. An eyelid with its own delicate line of lashes, some stuck to the skin with a thin crust of dried blood.    
“ _ Wik wik wik _ ,” the Oracle laughed at him. “You didn’t believe it.”   
“Open it,” the Prince said at once, getting down on his knees and seizing the blond by the head. He tried to use his thumb to prise the flap of skin up, but it wouldn’t budge. This seemed to explain the blood.    
“No fortunes for the fleshy!” The Oracle jeered, his pallid fingers wrapping around the man’s wrist as he shot his own matching scowl. “If Irfan the Terrible wants to cheat the fate lines, then he must become less than a whole man.”    
“What precisely makes me so terrible, hm, my nasty little sweet?” the Prince ground out, his fingers tightening in the flaxen locks. “This kingdom is mine. My ancestors carved it out of the mountainside, and look at the riches it provides! The people live in near-paradise. If I want to pluck a few prize fruit, then such is my  _ right _ .”   
“A few?” the blond scoffed. “Their bones wash down the river, you know. We make necklaces and carve their knuckles with runes. But even we ran out of uses, and now the riverbed runs white. We cannot count the corpses any more, used to fuel your little lie.”   
“And what lie would that be, pretty?” The Prince asked huskily, malice in his blackened eyes as he turned the waif’s head to the side, lapping up the sticky blood that trickled down from his ragged ear.   
“You stomach your lot and I’ll stomach mine,” the Oracle said doggedly, hissing as a tongue laved the raw wound where the piercing once was.    
“You know nothing of my lot,” the Prince challenged, licking his teeth. “It’s taking a great deal of skill not to rip your throat out right now. I can feel the blood pulsing there in time with your ghastly little heartbeat.”   
“We could rip out yours too, but we don’t take the flesh uninvited. We would be punished.” The Oracle forced a grin, though finally he moved his hand to untangle the blackened nails from his hair.    
The Prince narrowed his eyes and pulled him closer still, his lips brushing the wet shell of his ear. “You’re forbidden to cut me,” he said icily, his own words eliciting a chuckle as he wrapped a hand around the Oracle’s throat. “Not because I will not heal, but because you are  _ beneath  _ me. But I will cut you. Oh yes, I am going to carve this precious pallor with the most intricate pattern of crimson, and there is nothing you can do to stop me. You are not strong enough.”   
He gave another laugh but there was a dead look in his eyes as he rose to his feet and dragged the Oracle with him. There was an obsidian dagger in a scabbard on his belt, and the sting of it kissed the blond’s throat and kept him compliant as they made their way through the halls.   
“We ate a whole leg once,” the triclops said slyly as he stumbled forward under the Prince’s guidance. “And oh, we had such  _ truths  _ to tell. He would not take heed either. He cursed me as a witch but it changed nothing”.   
“Yes, well. I expect he was a mortal man, my sweet,” the Prince sniffed, yanking open a black-lacquered door and shoving the Oracle inside. “They’re weak.”   
Set free for now, the sharp-toothed seer grinned and wiped his wet jawline with the back of his hand, twisting in a circle. The room was a marvel of treasures and silk; no bed or tables to see, but there were lounges before a great mirror in the centre. If it weren’t for the cruel cutting instruments in amidst the jewels, one could almost think this was a voyeuristic treasury.    
“You say you’re something different?” The blond snickered, tilting his head down as though he could lead his grim stare with the closed crease on his head.    
“It has long been known that my bloodline is made of monsters,” Prince Irfan drawled, sheathing his dagger and unbuttoning the front of his handsome jacket. “Why do you think the Capital has not come to plunder us? It is because they know that I alone could decimate their armies, should I need to.”   
“But not beyond the shadow of the mountain,” the Oracle commented snidely over his shoulder. “You cannot venture that far. I’ve heard the tale before.”   
The Prince fell silent, shrugging the garment off his shoulders and hanging it off the back of a chair. Still clad in his undershirt and the rest of his suit, he rifled through a jewelry box as though the waif wasn’t in the room. After a moment, all he said was “Come here.” The diamonds he draped around the Oracle’s neck gleamed brilliantly as they settled into the hollow beneath his throat. Stroking his cheek thoughtfully as he stared down at the beginnings of his creation, the black one took up a sponge from a water bucket and began to wipe the red clean from his skin, gently soaking at the crust on his forehead. It created a brief moment of tenderness between them that the Oracle cut through with disparaging recklessness.   
“There’s a section of cheek that I bet would be sweet,” he rasped eagerly, leering up at the Prince’s face. “A large triangle at the side,  _ oh _ , how I want to bite.”   
“You are a foul thing,” The Prince sniffed with a wrinkled nose, dropping the sponge back into the bucket. “But you are my last pretty, at least until I wait for more to grow. I will have to take my time with you.” Pulling him closer, he pressed his lips against his with a soft grunt. His eyes opened wide as he recognised the coppery taste of blood.


	8. Part Eight: Just a Taste

The Prince panicked, wiping his tongue on his hand with all sense of decorum abandoned. Frantically running his tongue over the inside of his lips to check for cuts, he found none. “What did you do?!” he demanded.    
“ _ Wik wik wik _ ,” the Oracle snickered with a triumphant smile, for the crimson blood was beading on  _ his  _ tongue. The Prince stared, bewildered as to why the Oracle would do such a thing, when a foreign light distracted him and drew his gaze upwards. There, on the Oracle’s forehead, his skin bulged as though a tiny sun was born beneath it, golden rays shining from the splitting skin. Tiny rivulets of crimson framed the bridge of his nose as they trickled down from the wound. Suddenly, the waif was an even wilder sight; his eyes alight as even his hair seemed to stand on end around him, such was the force of the vibrations flowing through his wiry frame. With great gravity the Oracle seized the sides of the Prince’s head and then he was upon him, forcing the metallic tang past his lips once more as they fell to the floor, but the floor was no more.   
Falling, he gasped for breath but drew no air, for it seemed that even as his need rose his lungs would not obey his basic instincts. Suffocating, he flailed his body but found his limbs receding, useless, and then it seemed that suddenly he had had no body to begin with; his entire consciousness stuffed within the small space of a coin. Peering out in a panic, he saw the Oracle loomed before him, his eyes a milky white where there once had been blue. It was the largest eye that now held that hue, fearsome to behold.   
“ _ Where have you taken me _ ?!” he tried to demand, but he found he could not speak, for he had no mouth to use. Around him, the world was queerly curved like the inside of an urn that glowed hot with swirling red and gold that had more intensity than mercy on his eyes. Unused to astral presence, he slumped down to the bottom of his tiny orb-shaped viewpoint, struggling to focus on the heat-blurred scene before him.   
The Oracle, his sunken chest shaking with mute paroxysms of laughter, got to his feet and threw his arms out wide. His feet a twitchy pitter-patter made of two pale spindles of light, he spun around in the centre of it all, cackling without sound. As the Prince’s vision watered, he registered faint sounds; the bobbing pitch of drums and the celestial hum of a strange instrument he’d never heard before. Darker shapes slowly carved a path in the molten flames like a map drawn on parchment, though they twisted and sifted in and out of focus as though they were alive.    
_ toom toom toom _ __   
__ Drums? They sounded so far away to the Prince, yet with the ferocity of the Oracle’s dancing, kicking up his knees and throwing his arms back and forth, it must have sounded like a deafening din to him. Pressing closer to his container, he could scarcely make out words;   
_ shu..ddh ek… ja- _ __   
__ He didn’t understand the tongue. Trying to make sense of the writing around the curved walls instead, he twisted around and then jolted back in panic for the Oracle’s wild face loomed before him, unmasked and larger than life. Shrieking at the sight of his pale, mad eyes, he tried to backpedal but, formless, he could do nothing to stop the giant scooping him up and pitching his little sphere hard and fast through the molten wall.   
The terrible, hurtling sensation had no closure; no weighty smack against the ground to satisfy his need to make sense of the situation. Sloshing around in its prison with a queasy gravity, his consciousness simply slowed to a halt in a new space and he lost all idea of where he was. He tried again to see, and he found the floor was intricately inlaid marble stretching further than he could see.    
_ Jalaana _ _   
_ __ The voice seemed to come from everywhere, composed of many parts, as if an entire towns spoke in unison. He turned and his breath left him when he saw her there; a titan the size of seven men and with all the arms of three. Despite her extra limbs she moved fluidly, weaving a rich tapestry out of thousands of threads that appeared out of thin air. The fabric she created shimmered like gold, twisting up towards the heavens so far that he lost all sight of it. Despite her many exquisite adornments for she appeared almost encrusted in patterned silk and glittering jewels, it was this woven fabric that the Prince felt a desperation to see. As his eye tried to trace out the line of Fate, a wave of nausea filled his headspace and he collapsed in on himself. The quiet, melodic hum of a thousand voices accompanied the blackness that spared him more of the Eye’s visions.


	9. Part Nine: Meat

The Prince awoke later on the floor of his workshop with a dull ache in his head and his skin damp with sweat. He felt heavier than he remembered, or perhaps the dream of his formlessness was simple lingering. Slowly sitting up with a groan, he found the waif reclining expectantly on the chaise lounge, the Eye sealed once more.  
    A considerably wickeder sight with the blood drying on either side of his nose, the Oracle grinned contemptuously and threw two pearls at his feet like cast runes, and with a gasp the Prince realised he was staring at his false, pointed eyeteeth.   
    “Just a little lie, _wik wik wik_ ,” the seer grinned. “But you managed to get so many to believe it.”   
    “So you know,” the Prince snapped bitterly, rubbing his gums with the back of his hand. “That my bloodlust may be real, but my thirst for it is not. This is my farce that keeps the people afraid.”   
    “I have always known,” the Oracle teased. “You cannot fool me.”   
    “So why do you call me Irfan the Terrible?” he growled defensively. “The people only know me as their Prince. I remain nameless just as you do, and it has always been so with all the members of my bloodline.”   
    The blond held up a finger, silencing him gleefully. “It is not a name of now, but a name of what will be. When your powers become real, and your plague spreads beyond the shadow of the mountain.”   
    A helpless laugh forced its way up from the Prince’s throat. “Real vampires don’t exist. It’s merely a myth from the days after the Beginning. Fairy tales to keep the meek indoors while the gods still walked the earth without Order.”   
    “You presume to know a lot about the Gods,” the Oracle said snidey, stretching where he lay.  “You’d be floored by just a fraction of the truth. The Bards burned most of the good word centuries ago, but the Eye gives us glimpses. We understand the acts required of a man to become more than he is.” ****  
“What do you mean?” the Prince asked curiously, taking a step closer. “Tell me.”  
    “We could show you. But first, the _meat_ ,” the blond reminded him promptly, narrowing his eyes.   
    The Prince balked, fear showing on his face. “I do not want to go back to that place.”   
    “It was never your place,” the Oracle clicked his tongue. “That was why you were cast out so quickly.”   
    “It will still hurt.” Irfan flinched.   
    “It always hurts,” the Oracle laughed derisively. “How is anything at all achieved? And _oh_ , the grandeur of the achievements that will be. Just glimpses of the lives tied to your fate lines is enough to make one tremble.”   
    Silent, the Prince pressed his lips together tightly, furrowing his brow as he looked the Oracle’s way.   
    “Kings will kiss your feet and offer up their sons to pledge their loyalty,” the Oracle carried on breathlessly, his head lolling back as he showed his teeth to the gilded ceiling. “I have seen their sculpted bodies quiver on these tiles. The unending supply of them is obscene.”   
    Irfan took a shaky breath, longing swelling up in his pallid chest. “Please,” he implored, approaching the Oracle’s seat and taking his face in his hands. “I want them, _please_ ; you have to show me.”   
    “You know what I want,” the blond simpered, stroking his face back in kind. “The flesh, the meat. It’s already mine. You know it is.” He held out something to him; the Prince was only vaguely surprised to find it was the hilt of a knife that was not his own. Where he had hidden it, he did not know. There were so many in his workshop he could have taken instead.   
    Hesitantly, the Prince reached out for the blade. It flipped in the blond’s hand with unforeseen dexterity at the same time that spidery fingers tightened in his hair. With a yelp he brought his arms up but they only moved in symphony with the short, sharp slice downwards across his bicep. The lounge tipped back behind the waif as he attacked, all manner of of knees, palms and feet fixated on pinning his bleeding arm at the elbow joint and shoulder.   
    He clawed at tunic and flesh alike with his free hand, but the Oracle was hellbent. Another slice joined the first, meeting in a point that burned in a bright, new way as the sharp blade slipped under the tip of it. Drawing in a shaking breath, the Prince stared wide-eyed with horror up at the hooks and chains hanging from the ceiling in surreal perspective, and then the short, hoarse scream finally escaped him as the blade scraped _up_ . Even as he saw those stained, sharp teeth gnash into a smile, he managed to comprehend that the skin flap was still attached.   
    “Beg,” the Oracle rasped.   
    “No,” he gasped on reflex, then recoiled as slippery fingers slid up the intimate striations of his muscle tendons.   
    “ _Beg!_ ” the blond barked louder, squeezing the half-flayed flesh in his hands.   
    “Stop it!” Irfan screamed, banging his head back against the tile and kicking his legs up like a child. As the seer pulled at his skin, he thrashed again. “Make it stop!”   
    The wiry spectre shifted back and bent, bloody-muzzled as he took the makeshift appendage between his lips.   
    “ _Huk_ -” all air left Irfan’s throat as the foul seer slurped . When the needlepoints of two rows of teeth pressed against the base of it, he gave a twitchy little nod to the ceiling. He understood. “Y-yes-”   
    The pathetic stutter had scarcely left his lips before the Oracle’s jaw clamped. Snapping his head back like a bird taking a fish, the piece of the Prince disappeared. Even as he took the slippery thing down his gullet, his bloody fingers curled into a fist and punched the gaping wound.


	10. Part Ten: A Terrible Fate

The Prince screamed in pain and threw his head back but it never hit the ground. Instead, he seemed to strike some strange force of antigravity which peeled away the tiles from the floor around him with such ease that he envisioned it doing the same thing to his skin. His hands pressed tight to the sides of a pale ribcage as they lowered slowly through the void, vivid colours spinning around them in shapeless masses in a way that made Irfan think he might bring back up the wine he had sipped so dutifully at his party. His body heaved and convulsed, and it was only then that he realised he had closed his eyes.   
_ Irfan _ __  
__ The whisper startled him; he opened them but he felt like his eyelids had gone too far; full circle and then spiralling into nothingness. He was forced to see, and hear, and feel the world once more without a form but this time not a tiny thing but a blinkered, queasy protagonist as large as he had always been. The world shifted around him in bright, unapologetic scenes.    
_ boom boom boom _ __  
__ A foot, bloody and scarred with intricate paisley, stamped crooked upon a craggy gray rock riddled with holes. He saw his own hands, weathered and showing veins (had he not applied the powder?) grab and twist something white, pink, red and flailing. He felt the tension of the action in his forearms, tasted the sulphur in the air, just briefly before the sensation became more like a moving picture again.    
_ RAKTA _ __  
__ Backed up by the chants of its acolytes, the voice of the woman was with him again, all-encompassing yet as intimate as if it were spoken right into his ear. No - not the ear; the front of his mind, he would think, but he still didn’t understand the tongue.   
_ ACHUTA _ __  
__ Something important was in front of him but he could not see clearly; a sun was burning red and orange behind it, surrounded by dark shadows which only served to thrust it further forward for his attention, eclipsing all other things. He could still feel his hand gripping a roughly-crafted knife, making a slice in a familiar curved motion. Though he could not see it, he understood what the action brought; a hot red spill he had enjoyed inflicting a hundred times or more. As he imagined the blood falling, he felt the gravity of it himself, rushing closer to the glow which swelled and consumed all of his vision with a bright yellow burst.    
_ RAKTA, ACHUTA, KURBANI _ __  
__ He felt cold, deathly cold right down to his bones and that was the queerest part for his world was surrounded by golden fire. But he was fine; he did not burn - something was holding him, first at the breast and then at the head, suddenly all over as though it was brushing away the rest of the outer layers of his skin. The stinging was dwarfed by the expectation which flooded him; waiting to be reborn into something far greater than himself.   
_ KURBANI, KURBANI, PRAACEEN EK, EK _ __  
__ Yes. He didn’t need to understand the tongue, just the feelings. The implicit understanding. He could be terrible. His eyes could glow like red coals yet still be so cold on the inside; cold enough to turn the fire around him to blinding white ice. Unaging; more monster than man, his wealed skin purple, shiny and new. The purity of it stole his breath away, hope blooming in his chest even as he passed out in the wash of white.   
_ Irfan, pey _   
The Prince awoke with a feeling of substance once more but his head was cloudy. Remembering the white, his eyelids fluttered shut and he felt his blood rush, overcome by the ache in his arm and the sweet pull of sexual haze. There was a weight upon his groin; a slick heat had enveloped him without his knowledge.   
“ _ Uhngh _ . What-” Confused and aroused, he cracked open his eyes as best he could. As the world bled into focus, he found the exquisite madman impaling himself on his cock, wincing with each bounce that brought the back of his thighs flush with tanned skin. Gasping, Irfan lifted his hands to the waif’s hips out of habit (one was sluggish, slow - a tourniquet) but they were slapped away furiously.    
“Irfan,” the Oracle sneered down at him. His voice was haggard and there was contempt in his eyes, but still he said it; “Fill me with your seed.”   
“But… why?” The Prince’s reply was entwined with a quiet laugh. It was tight. Warm. Squeezing him. The blond must have been at it for some time, for he found it hard to keep his head clear as he began to yield focus to the swell of his cock. Was it... to worship him? To win his favour? His favour meant death. But  _ oh _ , what a death he would give him.   
The blond said nothing at first, breathing deeply as his turned his face up towards the ceiling. His toga in tatters, the tracks of blood traced rusty lines down the landscape of his throat, pooling in the valley of his collarbone before venturing down to the chest beyond. He had no nipples, the Prince regarded in wonder; only puffy, pink scars. Grinding his hips with great labour, the Oracle lifted his palm, looking away.   
“You-” he gasped. “Y-you will take a virgin bride.  __ Hahh … Wedding on the mountaintop… you will both-   
“Yes,” Irfan moaned in reply, “Yes, I remember. Oh, gods-”    
“You will f-feed the Ancient Ones,” the blond grimaced, curling forward and rocking faster. “And be-”   
“Be!” the lord yelled, seizing the man’s hips. This time the seer allowed it, crying out quietly as the fingers sunk into his pliant flesh and rode out the wave of his climax with one final stab followed by little more than twitching. “Yes…” as the fatigue filled the space where his orgasm had burst and the blood loss began to take its toll, the Prince drifted off with a ghost of a smile.


	11. Part Eleven: A Cursed Offering

The Oracle detached himself and rose to his feet with a grunt, tearing off a piece of his clothing and wiping his sex clean on the outside. Squinting at the door, he grit his teeth in a flicker of a grin then licked the blood from his lips. He pulled the Prince’s jewelry from his neck with a  disgusted scoff as he made his exit. The snapped thread spilled the gemstones on the ground, and it was on one of these stones underfoot that the Oracle slipped on the tiles, crumpling in a heap with a wince. Groaning, he tasted blood as he tried to lift his head, swallowing before the consequences could dawn on him. He gasped at the warmth at the back of his throat, coughing desperately, but it was too late.   
“ _Haa-- aaarrrhhh!_ ”  
The skin on his forehead split apart again with well-greased ease and he was cast almost immediately upon the giant dais beneath the Fate lines. Lifting his head and fighting against the hammering of his heart, he saw Fate was not weaving, but pointing down at him with all five other palms raised. The voices screamed along with her caterwaul; their reverent chanting now a merciless condemnation.   
_GAD-DAAR, GAD-DAAR_   
“ _Gaddaar_ , yes! I spite you!” he snarled, springing up and throwing his arms wide. He stamped and made obscene gestures, his bright little light the size of a gnat in comparison to the immensity of Her. “I will curse you until my last breath!”  
 _JALAANA_ , the booming reply as Fate reached behind her glittering headdress and produced a giant scimitar.   
He did not flee, but ran towards it, screamed furiously as time slowed with the gravity of of the blade striking down upon him. It hit his crown with the sound of an explosion, a chrysanthemum kaleidoscope as he was ejected with a great pain in his head.  
His face was wet when he awoke; vitreous juices and other humours spilling down his chin from the bloody pit where the Eye once was. His lips twitched with uncertain emotion as he comprehended it; she had excommunicated him. His chest swelled as he took a deep breath, spasming slightly on the exhalation as he thought he might laugh.  
“Pride,” he grunted, getting to his feet again. He was an apparition of horror, but he was not dead yet. Fate had thought it better to disgrace him than to snuff him out. Servants screamed and scurried out of his ways as he trudged out of the palace and descended the royal stairs in the twilight.  
The guards spat out clouds of pipe smoke as he approached the night-time barricade at the city gates.   
“Make way,” the Oracle announced with a bitter jut of his chin.   
“The way is shut until dawn, Hexseer,” one guard groused, hand on his scabbard. “Find one of your zealots to shelter you.”  
“I made them leave,” the blond gave a fey smile. “All who appease me have left, and now I will do so also.”  
Quickly losing patience with his cryptic chatter, the disfigured officer grabbed his elbow and hauled him to a smaller door set in the gate to grant sentries quick access.   
“Then leave!” he barked, shoving him through so hand he landed on his hands and knees in the dirt. “And good riddance to you, vermin! May the Prince show you more of his ‘kindness’ once your wounds have healed.”  
The Oracle gave a coughing wheeze as the the wooden door slammed shut behind him, and he was alone. Kindness! Overrated ideals. This was not a language spoken by the gods - they would learn that soon enough. With grim determination he got to his feet for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, and he made his way along the dark path.  
The Oracle remembered when he had done the unthinkable thing - he had entered the act with a light curiosity that was little more than a game to him. He had heard whispers of ones undone on the dais; consuming themselves right up to the waist just to chase a dream, but what need would the terrible children have to be a greed? He wondered. It had been easy for him - why make his hands less than whole when he had already banished pieces of himself? Straight from the jar given to him by the doctor; first one and then the other, the small lumps of flesh were pickled and hard to chew, but he offered them. He had eaten worse things. But when he saw what awaited him, how he had screamed!  
Screamed at her! Rallied against the wench who weaved this thing in store for him, cursing the lot she had decreed. But it was useless; Fate would not hear. She had only more eyes where her ears should be. So the Oracle had no choice but to bear the burden of the knowledge of what his sacrifice would unlock. Spite consumed him with each passing day, burning out the fleshy insides of his empathy. He filled it instead with secrets, half-truths and contraband stories from the olden days, carefully gathered through visions and words from the wise. The Oracle would not go quietly.  
“Rakta, a cheater, tambourine,” he babbled flippantly as he walked, out of the town and past the cliff stair, into the forest. The birds and animals all steered clear of him in the late twilight, perhaps thinking him a predator, for his bitter grunts as he made his trek were animalistic indeed. It was a long way up the mountainside, but the Oracle had reached his goal by the time the moon hung full and white in the highest point of the inky sky.   
It framed his flaxen hair like a halo as he looked down the mouth of the mountain from its craggy lip. His face was illuminated by the faint golden glow of the molten rock far, far beneath him in the pit. Even from this distance, he could feel the heat in the ground, almost thrumming through his feet. This was a holy place.   
He splayed a hand over his seeded belly thoughtfully, reminded of the woman he had sent away to Fate’s temple. The Ancient Ones would be pleased by her offering, but the one he made now, devoid of all sanctity and spitting in the face of their children… the old gods would be angry beyond reason. They would rip a hole in the earth where it was made.  
He laughed at that, and then flung himself into the fire.  
Back in the city, the fat one sighed and tightened his strap. He was leaving on a wagon and he wasn’t coming back. For a few toes was a paltry price, you see, to cheat Fate and taint a prophecy.


	12. Epilogue: Meeting Mort

Deep in the aether, where the world was nought but swirling shadows dotted with stars, Mort existed. He existed mostly everywhere, but he existed mostly  _ here _ , and that was how he liked it. Larger than all comprehension, he waited patiently nonetheless, his skeletal hands folded before him as he regarded a tiny wonder. The ball of light before him was no star; something bright and white formed there and there had not been one like it for a hundred years. As he watched with bottomless pits for eyes, the ball twisted and bulged. It developed into a glowing entity; hunched and with guarded posture, it peered up at him with narrow slits, but it had no mouth to make comment.   
“That was clever,” Mort remarked without greeting, “Very clever indeed. The Muses are already spreading the word of the atrocity and the ascension. There will be many tales spun about the demigoddess Spit.”   
At this comment, the thing shook, its glow swelling into furious flames. A bulge swelled in its throat, unable to escape. Stamping its feet where it stood suspended in space, Mort was was reminded of an agitated war dance performed by one of his ancestors. Thrashing, burning, it finally plunged its fingers into its own face and ripped its own jaw open in order to reply.   
“DEMI- _ GOD _ .” It roared from a raw, wet throat; the force of it thrusting the little deity backwards.   
Mort was unaffected by the outburst, but in his omnipresence he felt shivers of it through all fibres of his being. It earned a slight inclination of his head. “Very well. It is fitting.” he said gently. “Let us finish you, little Spit, before you forget your ways.”   
Though Mort’s hands started out bigger than all of the Earth, as he reached towards the lightform they shrunk down to just the right size. With well-practiced skill he sculpted the deity’s finer features, along with three more appendages he had not had previously. When he was done, Spit stood there, looking down at the world with cold blue eyes. Turning back to the god of Life and Death, he splayed all four of his new palms.    
“Fitting, yes. You should feel formed more like what you wished for, now. Just don’t bother eating them if you disagree. My work is very difficult to undo. They’ll just grow back, not unlike a newt’s tail.”   
Running his tongue over his teeth, Spit found them sharpened just the same as his old body. However, when he lifted one of his four arms to touch his forehead, he found nothing there but a knotted scar.   
“No; no Eye. Those are not quite mine to give.” Mort explained. “Nor would you be granted one so easily, I think. You are smart, little Spit, but you have still ascended by cheating my daughter, and she will be appeased before you are truly free.”   
The blond laughed, his long hair splayed around him like starlight. “Daughter. Fate?” he asked, his voice still husky and raw from the strain he had placed on his freshly-forged vocal chords.   
“Yes. Many mortals do not realise that I fathered Fate and Chaos both. I made them to please my lover, but it did little to distract her from her lot.”   
Spit smiled. “I know,” he rasped softly.    
“You do, don’t you? At least, as much as you are able to comprehend,” Mort remarked, intrigued. “You must have been a very sharp little soul to figure out what the Bards buried so long ago. It has been a long time since we have had an ascension.”   
“Last?” the demigod asked, followed by a quiet cough.   
“The most recent to ascend?” Mort came close to a chuckle. “Why, it could only be Morel, of course. He brought about a golden age in humanity. You would do well to revere him, should you ever cross paths.”   
Spit nodded, saving his voice. Lifting his topmost two arms up, he made an imploring gesture at the great old god.   
“Ah, yes.  _ Your _ lot.” Mort said wisely, raising his hand. “You will go to Fate and be tasked for her forgiveness. You will not make your own mark until such a time that she has been appeased. This is what I decree.”   
The little blond gave a dizzy smile, falling to his knees on the nothingness that held him in place. The odd show of thanks was followed by a slow, languid arch of his back, and as his body spun around it was as though a black shroud had enveloped it, and he was gone.   
With that business done, Mort curiously returned his attention to the glut of souls which had arrived for his keeping. Sifting through them carefully with his bony fingertips, he lifted a single soul up for his inspection - a bruised and battered thing emitting a weak purple glow. Even as he held it, he could hear his lover shrieking; unseen forces squeezed in around to soul as though trying to find a space for it to fit. With a merciful sigh, he bent down and snuffed out the glow as one would put out a candle. It simply ceased to exist, and the shrieking stopped.    
“I love you,” Mort said quietly, to the dark. There was no audible reply, but the world carried on in Order, and it was good. 

 

THE END

 


End file.
